Advent Favorites — Henri Nouwen: Teach Me to Pray

Originally Posted Monday, December 5, 2005

Henri Nouwen — Teach Me to Pray

Filed under: Prayers & Prayer Themes, Advent Devotionals — Karen B.

This prayer by Henri Nouwen was included in an Advent Devotional Guide that Truro Church published a few years ago. It is very appropriate for Advent with its theme on waiting on the Lord, resting in His presence, and asking the Lord to “create new doors” in our lives that we might draw closer to Him.
———–

Teach Me to Pray
Henri Nouwen

Every day I see again that only you can teach me to pray,
only you can set my heart at rest.
Only you can let me dwell in your presence.

No book, no concept or theory will ever bring me close to you
unless you yourself are the one who lets them become the doors to you.

But Lord, let me at least remain open to your initiative.
Let me wait patiently and attentively for the hour when you will come
and break through the walls I have erected.

Create new doors.
Teach me, O Lord, to pray

Advent Favorites — Lord, Let Us Receive Your Clear Light

Originally Posted: Monday, December 20, 2004

Lord, let us receive Your clear light

Filed under: Advent Devotionals — Karen B.

The Word made flesh for us gives us the greatest hope
that the murky night of darkness will not overwhelm us,
but we shall see the daylight of eternity.

Lord, let us receive your clear light; be for us such a mirror of light
that we may be given grace to see you unendingly.

If we are overcome, you have the power to forgive us;
Therefore, in my sin I call on you,my Lord, my Light, for help.
For you were sent into the world to enlighten my heart,
to nurture true repentance and to make the Holy Spirit’s
work grow more powerfully in me.

With the Father and the Holy Spirit you live and reign for ever!

–Hildegard of Bingen

Advent Favorites — Lord, Revive Us! (Charles Spurgeon)

Originally Posted: Friday, December 3, 2004

Lord, revive us!
All our help must come from you.
Give to your people your love,
Your confidence,
Your holy daring,
Your consecration,
Your liberality,
Your obedience,
Your holiness.

Walking among the golden candlesticks,
Trim every lamp and make every light,
even those that burn feebly now,
Shine out gloriously through Your Spirit.
– C.H. Spurgeon

Advent Favorites — I Am Not Worthy (St. John Chrysostom)

Originally Posted: December 6, 2004

Collect: Second Sunday of Advent

Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

———-

I am not worthy, Master and Lord,
that you should come
beneath the roof of my soul;
Yet, since you in your love for all people
wish to dwell within me,
in boldness I come before you.

You command “Open the gates!”
Gates you alone have forged;
And you will come in
with love toward all, as is your nature.
You will come in and enlighten my dark reasoning.

I believe you will do this,
for you did not send away
the harlot who came to you with tears,
nor cast out the repenting publican,
nor reject the thief
who acknowledged your kingdom.
You did not forsake the repentant persecutor,
the apostle Paul, even as he was.

But all who came to you in repentance,
you counted in the band of your friends;
You, who alone lives in glory forever,
now and unto the endless ages.

— St. John Chrysostom (347-407)

Another prayer by St. John Chrysostom

Wonderful Advent Prayers from Scotland

Friend of this blog, David McCarthy (aka Gadget Vicar), vicar of St. Silas church in Glasgow, Scotland has posted a link to an Advent prayer blog created by women of his church. There is a brief Scripture and prayer for each day. It is wonderful.

Check it out!

Here’s Advent Day One’s entry.

Day One

Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. (Psalm 37:4)

Father help me in dark days to see you light and to take pleasure in the day to day, in the moment, and give you praise for my very breath. Make the desires of my heart your desires, whatever is true, pure, lovely, admirable, right, excellent and most worthy of praise, may my desires be. Strip away everything else until I am all those things without even thinking or trying, until they are my very being, in harmony with you.

Amen.

An Advent Prayer: Increase our longing for Christ

I found this lovely prayer at a blog called Kingdom People. There is no attribution so I assume it is by blog author Trevin Wax, a Baptist pastor in Tennessee. I love it when I find Baptists who “get” Advent!

***

Father in heaven,
our hearts desire the warmth of your love
and our minds are searching for the light of your Word.

Increase our longing for Christ our Savior
and give us the strength to grow in love,
that the dawn of his coming
may find us rejoicing in his presence
and welcoming the light of his truth.

We ask this in the name of Jesus the Lord.

You can find many more excellent prayers at this site as well.

Advent Favorites — Henri Nouwen – An Advent Prayer

Note: this is the first in a new series of “Advent Favorites” – the best Advent posts from Advent 2004 -2006 from our old blog site. There will be at least 2-3 new Advent Favorites each week. They’ll all be linked in the Advent section of the sidebar, and also the Special Series section. Enjoy and a Blessed Advent to all our readers!

***

Originally posted: Monday, November 28, 2005

Henri Nouwen — An Advent Prayer

Filed under: Advent Devotionals — Karen B.

An Advent Prayer from the late Rev. Henri Nouwen — so appropriate for the beginning of Advent and this season which can be so frantic. May the Lord indeed help us quiet our hearts and listen for His voice each day. May we diligently seek to know His presence, rather than allowing our anxious thoughts to distract us and may He tune our ears to hear His counsel.

Lord Jesus, Master of both the light and the darkness, send your Holy Spirit upon our preparations for Christmas.

We who have so much to do seek quiet spaces to hear your voice each day.

We who are anxious over many things look forward to your coming among us.

We who are blessed in so many ways long for the complete joy of your kingdom.

We whose hearts are heavy seek the joy of your presence.

We are your people, walking in darkness, yet seeking the light. To you we say, “Come Lord Jesus!”

———

Art Credit: Advent and Triumph of Christ (detail), Hans MEMLING, 1480; Oil on wood, Alte Pinakothek, Munich. From the Web Gallery of Art — a fantastic resource. You can read more about this picture here.

Prayer Credit: The only publishing information I have found for this prayer is the following:
Catholic Family Prayer Book, published by Our Sunday Visitor, 2001.

Advent Links: the Lent & Beyond Advent Resources Compilation

Last updated: Dec 1 2008, 19:00 GMT

Update: Here’s the 2008 Advent Carnival post at A Ten O’Clock Scholar. Head over there for some links to nice Advent meditations and ideas about how to celebrate Advent as a family. Don’t miss also Kerry’s posts on Celebrating Saint Nicholas Day, or Advent Book Ideas

Wishing all of our readers a truly blessed Advent! — KB

***

Some new links for 2008:

I’ll soon be adding more links and putting them in proper categories, but this is a start. Most of these are not new sites, just new to me.

TeachingMom’s Advent Calendar you MUST-VISIT!

Reformed Church in America’s Advent, Christmas & Epiphany Page — includes Daily Jesse Tree Family Devotions

An online Jesse Tree Advent calendar

O Night Divine blog, see especially the Preparing for Advent & Christmas post and the Celebrate with Crafts page

Center for Excellence in Preaching: Advent 2008 Resources

Prayer & Worship Resources for Advent

Holiday Cookie Recipes – over 600 cookie recipes! Scary… (for one’s waistline, that is!)

Subversive Influence blog – had a special Advent 2007 blog series. Some of the material looks like it might be very good, but I’ve not yet checked it out too carefully. Nor do I know if there will be a 2008 Advent series.

Our Grace Journey: Inductive Bible Studies for Advent (looks very good!)

American Bible Society Advent Resources page (includes short Advent devotional series for Matthew, Mark & Luke)

Full Homely Divinity: Advent

Advent 2008 blog — the entries will be focused on Isaiah

The Story-Formed calendar blog (Advent entries). I just discovered this blog devoted to resources for the liturgical year. There are some lovely Advent meditations and resources. Very worth a visit!

***

Here are some new L&B compilations posts that link to excellent Advent resources:

New Advent Links for 2008 #1 (this includes a number of the links above, plus some others)

Creative Advent Calendars

Advent Links & Resources: All About Jesse Trees

A Cool Family Advent Idea: An Advent Chain

David Ould’s meditations on Handel’s Messiah

***

ADVENT LINKS: the Lent & Beyond Advent Resources Compilation

This is a compilation of some of the best online Advent resources I’ve found in the past three years as well as some new discoveries in recent days. Enjoy! Please leave a comment or send an e-mail (AnglicanPrayer@gmail.com) to let us know what you find helpful (or not), or especially if you have other resources to suggest.

***

Table of Contents

1. Lent & Beyond Links

2. Lectionary Resources, Advent Prayers & Liturgies

3. Online Advent Calendars

4. Advent Worship Resources and Online Devotionals

5. The Advent Antiphons

6. Other Advent Resource Compilations (lots more lists of links!)

7. Advent Resources for Children and Families

8. Articles about Advent

9. Blogs and Bloggers

10. Miscellaneous (especially music and art links)

Index of ALL Advent entries from 2004 – 2006

Ok all you Advent-o-philes! Dig in! We’ve done it! We’ve gone back through the archives and cached versions of the old Lent & Beyond website, and we’ve put together a listing (with hopefully working links to archived versions of each post) of ALL of our Advent entries at Lent & Beyond in 2004, 2005, and 2006. (In 2007 due to the hacker problems at our old blog we posted very little Advent stuff, and all that’s already here on this version of the blog, just dig back through the Advent Category.)

There are about 200 blog entries in these 3 Advent indexes. Enjoy!

Index to 2004 Advent posts
Index to 2005 Advent posts
Index to 2006 Advent posts

(Some of these entries will be making a reappearance here this year as part of our Advent Favorites series…, but we wanted to make the old archived links available now to everyone who might be looking for Advent devotional material or Advent resources.)

Note: the updated version of our Advent Resources Compilation is now here on this blog. I’ve not included the archived version in the 2005 or 2006 index.

An Index of all of our 2006 Advent Posts (from our old blog)

Note, all of these links should be clickable. They point to the archived versions of posts at our old site. If you have problems reading something, give a shout in the comments. We have all of these posts saved in Word Format, so could repost something or forward it by e-mail as needed.

Some of these will be reposted on this blog coming days and weeks as part of our “Advent Favorites” series. The entries listed below are in chronological order as we posted them last year.

Preparing for Advent — Peter Toon: Stir up our wills — Today!

Zechariah 9:9-10

Favorite Advent Devotional Posts from 2004 – 2005

Preparing for Advent

Index of 2005 Advent Posts (from our old site)

Our most significant Advent posts from 2005 (in chronological order as we posted them). Note, I’ve excluded posts with links to the daily Scripture readings unless there was commentary about the passages included. All of these links should be clickable and take you to archived versions of our old Advent entries. Leave a comment if you have trouble.

From Thanksgiving to Advent…

That Your name may be made holy in us

Advent 1

Henri Nouwen — An Advent Prayer

A table with Advent Readings for Year 2

Online Advent Resources: Advent Calendars

Welcome to Lent & Beyond’s Advent Devotional Series

Of the Father’s Love Begotten

Lighting the Advent Wreath

An Index of all our Advent posts from 2004 (from our old site)

All of the links below should take you to readable copies of the archive of our old blog. The entries are in chronological order as posted in 2004. If you have problems with any link, please leave a comment.

A meditation on the Advent Collect — Peter Toon

Leander Harding: Advent and Hope

Lord, Revive Us! (Charles Spurgeon)

Advent thoughts from Kendall Harmon

I Am No Longer My Own (St. Catherine of Genoa)

The Servant King (Graham Kendrick)

I Am Not Worthy… (St. John Chrysostom)

The unsearchable greatness of the Trinity

Appointed from eternity, from the beginning, before the world began,

Hallowed be Thy name

The First and the Last,

Hallowed be Thy name

Rejoicing before the Lord always.

Hallowed be Thy name

The King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts,

Hallowed be Thy name

Who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ the Messiah,

Hallowed be Thy name

And He Who bears witness to His baptism and His death, the Holy Spirit, Who is the Truth.

Hallowed be Thy name

The three witnesses in heaven: the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit, and these three are One.

Hallowed be Thy name

Besides You there is no God.

Hallowed be Thy name

Proverbs 8:22, 23, 30, Isaiah 44:6, 1 John 5:6-7

A Christmas Eve Prayer

Father in heaven, thank you for love.
Jesus, thank you for coming to help us tonight and always.
Holy Spirit, thank you for making us new every day.

Dear God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, help us to be more and more like you:
by letting you love us so we can love others;
by letting you help us so we can help others;
by letting you change us so we can help you change the world.

We pray in the Name of Jesus, your gift to all of us. Amen.

The Traditional Collect for II Advent

Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast, the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.